Recorded between May 2013 and September 2014, The Pale Emperor is the ninth studio album from Marilyn Manson; it was released worldwide on January 20th, 2015.

The Pale Emperor came from a book that I was given in 2000 by [Johnny] Depp. We have each other’s back as in we have the same tattoo on our back. It covers our entire back. It was about Heliogabalus which may be a little esoteric for our listeners. He was the emperor of Rome before Caligula. He was the first one to deny God and that’s a big deal. For whatever reason I had just opened up all the boxes of my past life. I moved into a new house while I made this record.

Normally I’d title the album before the album was made but this time I titled it after it was made. I unearthed all of these books and I found this book Johnny gave me in Y2K when I went to stay with him in South of France because we thought the world was going to come to an end. Instead we set off firecrackers and bought all the absinthe there was in different countries. I read it and it was referring to this emperor who they referred to the pale emperor and I identified with it suddenly.

He’s the topmost person that gives me things that I don’t really know why at the time but I know later. It’s unusual, and that’s why we have this strange, complete lack of time and reality. I met him first when I was an extra on “21 Jump Street” at age 19. Just when I did the first Katey Sagal interview, it’s a cover story, which I gave to her which ended up being the reason why I was on “Sons of Anarchy”. It all comes into a strange circle that proves that everything happens for what … I’m going to get my next tattoo: ‘Fated, Faithful, Fatal’ which is from the “The Mephistopheles of Los Angeles.”